Bush Like To Screw Everybody, So Do Your Penance

From The Idolatry of America by Damon Linker:

While the shelves of our bookstores sag under the weight of tracts arguing the political case for church-state separation, surprisingly few authors have undertaken the task of reminding us, in light of the Bush administration's faith-based policies, why religious believers should think twice before plunging into partisan politics. Until recently, David Kuo's Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction was the only prominent example. A deeply pious evangelical, Kuo was brought on board by the Bush administration to oversee the implementation of the president's program in Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. He quickly discovered that his high hopes for synthesizing religion and politics would be disappointed. Not only did Bush show little interest in fighting for the chronically under-funded program in Congress, but high-level White House staffers repeatedly expressed contempt for the evangelicals who were the president's strongest supporters. In Kuo's view, the faith of devout Christians had been manipulated by the Bush administration for the sake of political gain. Kuo himself was so certain--and so ashamed--of such manipulation that he concluded his book with the suggestion that evangelicals refrain from political engagement for two years as an act of penance for their recent overindulgence in power politics.